Did Russ Feingold Just End a War?

Rwandan President Paul Kagame mocked the growing stack of evidence: “I understand that human rights groups are locked in a fierce competition for big checks from wealthy donors and they need to generate big headlines.” But almost everyone believed he was up to no good. After all, Rwanda had secretly backed the National Congress for the Defense of the People, and it was more than plausible that it would do so again with this rebellion, given its ongoing complaints about an anti-Rwandan militia in Congo called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by its French acronym, FDLR. The FDLR is the successor group to the Hutu militia that committed the Rwandan genocide, although analysts say it now is a shadow of its former self, numbering around just 1,500 men, and threatens the local Congolese population far more than it does any Rwandans. Rwanda’s true interests in eastern Congo have more to do with creating a buffer zone against perceived threats emanating from a resource-rich region it considers its backyard.

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Inside the U.S. government, officials confirmed the reports, and the evidence kicked off a debate over how to respond. On one side stood those who thought Kagame should be saved from public embarrassment. He had, after all, come to power by ending the genocide, and he proved exceptionally proficient at putting aid dollars to good use and running a competent military. He presided over record growth rates, cracked down on corruption, established universal health care and even banned plastic bags. Africa needed more Kagames, the argument went. He also had a network of powerful defenders, from Bono and Bill Gates to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who loved to tout his success story, and a history of playing hardball when challenged (even managing to get a U.S. ambassador, career Foreign Service official Margaret McMillion, sent home after she wrote honest reports detailing his dark side). And so refraining from public criticism of Rwanda became established U.S. policy.

In the Obama administration, Susan Rice, then the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., was the highest-ranking advocate of the protect-Kagame camp. Rice had served on President Clinton’s National Security Council staff during the genocide, and she regretted her own opposition to a U.S. intervention to stop it. After leaving government, she joined the consulting firm Intellibridge, where Kagame was one of her clients. Now,she sought to keep any pressure on him private.

But staffers in the National Security Council and the State Department, those who read the daily evidence of Rwandan wrongdoing, were far more critical. So was the State Department’s top Africa official, Johnnie Carson, a career diplomat with four decades of experience in the region. Even before the M23, Carson had worried about Kagame’s creeping authoritarianism, noting that his Rwanda is a place where elections get stolen and dissidents get harassed and even killed. “I’ve seen leaders like Paul Kagame before,” Carson told me. “They change over time, and what you see on the cover does not reflect what’s inside.” According to a former U.S. official who maintains contacts inside the government, the Rwandans attempted to circumvent Carson by approaching their perceived friends outside the State Department, particularly Rice.

At first, Rice prevailed. In June 2012, as the U.N. finalized its report on Rwandan support for the M23, she led efforts to delay it and give the Rwandan government a chance to respond. As the New York Timesreported, when Rice’s French counterpart at the U.N., Gérard Araud, proposed “naming and shaming” Kagame, Rice responded, “Listen, Gérard, this is the DRC,” using the acronym for Congo. “If it weren’t the M23 doing this, it would be some other group.”

Quiet diplomacy, however, wasn’t working: Rwanda wouldn’t cut the M23 loose. And so over the summer of 2012, Rice started to lose. Carson and his allies managed to convince Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that it was time to go public. “The information that I brought to the table was strong and sufficient to move the U.S. government away from its position of consistently giving Kagame’s government the benefit of the doubt,” Carson told me.

Afterward, Wendy Sherman, the No. 3 at the State Department, called Kagame to inform him that the U.S. government would withhold military assistance to Rwanda. The amount was small—$200,000—but its suspension represented the most public U.S. condemnation to date. Yet Rice was still working to give Kagame breathing room. According to the New York Times, she sought to delay another U.N. report detailing Rwanda’s interference in Congo, which was eventually released on Nov. 15. And she successfully intervened to remove explicit mentions of Rwanda from a Security Council resolution condemning “external support” for the M23 that was passed on Nov. 20.

That same day, the M23 secured a major victory, taking the city of Goma, a provincial capital of 1 million people. Ammunition belts strung around their necks like medals, the rebels marched past the blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers, who, clinging to their narrow mandate, didn’t fire a shot. For the U.N., it was an embarrassment. For U.S. officials, it made taking Kagame’s side far less defensible.